Today I went to the Powerpoint Karaoke Night in Farringdon’s “The Bear” pub. Whilst very successful in the US, the crowd attracted by this instance of the PPTKN was much like going to a lunch break at the office. All in all it was 6 people who all took on the challenge, 3 of which work with me.

Powerpoint Karaoke basically means that you give a presentation you don’t know. All the PPT files are randomly downloaded from the web and you have no clue what lurks behind the next space bar hit – may it be a new slide full of acronyms and schemas that don’t make sense or yet another terrible animation.

The crop of PPTs picked randomnly was very weird indeed and ranged from a presentation on cobras most likely assembled by 12 year olds to quantum physics. As with anything with the right people though, the evening was a very good experience and a lot of fun, so for the love of Ian, the organizer, get your arse in gear and come around the next time.

The location in Farringdon was a bit to my annoyance (I am not a city fan), but at least the bar tab we accumulated which came up to about 20 pound did not mean the bouncers kept us in to make up for the room use – the city is dead after 7 anyways.

• Photos on Flickr
• Ian Forrester’s blog entry
• Tom Croucher’s blog entry
• Neil Crosby blogging again!

[tags]powerpoint,karaoke,powerpointkaraoke,presentations,improv,ianforrester,tomcroucher,neilcrosby[/tags]

The often-seen in my referer log Smashingmagazine spent some time asking 35 Designers 5 questions each about what their favourite CSS trick is, what font they like to use and so on.

The outcome of the survey called 35×5 is an interesting read and it seems that despite the raging “which font” debate, we’re all on the same lines. I really enjoyed seeing that so many people agree with me in saying that “don’t make me think” is a very important book.

(No idea how I came to be asked as a Designer, I mean look around you!)
[tags]smashingmagazine,35×5,survey,design,webdesign,webdevtrick[/tags]

Be there or be annoyed by lots of tweets and blog posts about it. Read about the details over at the official hack day page http://hackday.org/ and I am very much looking forward to seeing you there.

• 16th and 17th of June 2007
• Alexandra Palace, North London (ice skates optional)
• Presented by Yahoo! and BBC Backstage
• Stay tuned for more info…

[tags]hackday,openhackday,openhackdayeurope,london,alexandra palace,yahoo,bbc backstage,cantwait,ohboyohboyohboy[/tags]

Hey, seems like nobody is signing up for cubicgarden’s Powerpoint Karaoke (that is Powerpoint, Ian, not Power Point). I consider it a wonderfully stupid idea and I am game.

In other news, I started a stupid new blog and flickr group. The idea was born when I pointed out to a friend that it is amazing that women have so many shoes and handbags. She then asked me how many T-Shirts I have and I did realize that I have far too many. So what I will do now is:

• Wear a different T-Shirt every day
• Upload the Shirt photo to flickr and blog its story
• Decide whether to keep or ditch it

All the ditched shirts will go either to a charity shop or to the clothes bank (depending on their state) or you can claim them on the blog (I will not cover postage, so that is on your cap).

Check it out: http://icant.co.uk/tshirtaday/

[tags]powerpoint,karaoke,tshirtaday,silly,fun[/tags]

Following the workshop in Singapore I promised to send out a more detailed explanation how to create a simple slide show in JavaScript that can be fully maintained in HTML, redesigned in CSS and all dynamic labels changed without having to change the main script.

The trick is once again separation, and if you care to learn more about this, check the 5 step example how to create a maintainable slideshow

[tags]JavaScript,slideshow,images,maintainability,unobtrusive,webdevtrick,beginningjavascript,bestpractice[/tags]